White Fence Farm Adds to Flock With Westminster Spot

White Fence Farm keeps adding to its flock. When longtime restaurateur Craig Caldwell and Tom Piercy bought the forty-year-old White Fence Farm almost two years ago from owner Charlie Wilson, they saw the potential for building a farm team of fried-chicken outlets around the metro area, as well as expanding the original operation. (It's now home to one of the model railroad groups evicted from Union Station, for example.)

Now the next member of that farm team will open this afternoon at Mission Commons in Westminster, right at 7615 West 88th Avenue, where it will be open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily starting tomorrow.

In addition to the original spot at 6263 West Jewell Avenue in Lakewood, White Fence Farm has outposts at the Pepsi Center and in Green Valley Ranch (the latter of which suffered a break-in earlier this month), with long-anticipated spots still to come at Elitch Gardens, on the 16th Street Mall, and at 1025 East Ninth Avenue. 

One of the challenges for opening these outposts, Caldwell says, has been figuring out how to make those crowd-favorite corn fritters so that they would survive the trip home in to-go orders. (The chicken is cooked in the main kitchen, then fast-fried at the satellite locations.) That issue was solved with a newfangled fritter fryer; you can catch one in action in Westminster at the grand-opening festivities at 4:30 p.m. today.

The 16th Street Mall and Capitol Hill outlets should open in the next few weeks.

There's also a four-decade-old White Fence Farm in Romeoville, Illinois, which is linked in spirit to the Lakewood restaurant but is owned by the Robert Hastert family.